The Old Woman
by samantha-darling
Summary: There was no pride and no hope. Only smoke. Smoke and memories.


The small apartment was dark nowadays. Musty too. She couldn't dust anymore, her quaking knees would not support her, and a thin layer of grayish brown covered all of the trinkets and furniture. She could not even open her shades because the cloud of fuzz would most certainly overwhelm her. Her lungs could not take it.

And yet she sat, old and paper thin, a cigarette held loosely between trembling lips that had deflated like balloons with the passing of time. In a molding chair her mother had given her upon moving into her first home, She sat and tried not to notice the encroaching years.

No food in the cupboards. She had not worked in years. The checks from her late husband's insurance policy had finally stopped. The last one had come more than two weeks ago. The nice neighbor beside her had taken it and gone grocery shopping for her, bringing back more groceries than what that check could have paid for. She thanked her with a furious blush. The last of her pride had disappeared as she watched the woman unload the bags in her grimy cupboards.

There was none within her now, anyway. There was no pride and no hope. Only smoke.

Smoke and memories.

She kept no pictures. Not of them anyway. There was one framed photograph of her husband, when he was young and beautiful, beside her small bed. His hair had been a sandy blonde back then. His eyes the color of ferns in the forest. Before the cancer took him that is. At the end they had turned a milky white color. His eyes had clouded over and he had left her truly alone.

They had no children. She had gotten pregnant once or twice and it had all ended tragically. The blame rested heavily on her shoulders. He deserved to have sons and daughters. She could not give him even one.

The motherhood books she had burned. The nursery furniture they had sold. The hope of one day carrying a baby in her arms had passed painfully into obscurity. He never blamed her, but he was never the same. He must have been happy to die, she thought with a grimace. Anyplace must have been better than with her, a barren field with no chance of rain.

A cough wracked her frame. It shook her to the core. Her eyes watered from the intensity. Pain. She was full of pain. And blood. It flecked her hand.

Blood in her lungs.

Blood in her hand.

Blood on her soul.

She bled all the time now.

And there was no one left to care.

She had been abandoned.

By everyone.

Not a day went by where she resisted the urge to curse them all. To curse Peter for his ruggedness and brashness. To curse Edmund for his simple logic and knowledge. To curse Lucy for her innocence. She burned to curse her the most. Her younger sister. The sister she had been so close to, and yet who had left her to fate.

Their graves were unkempt. She never made it out to the cemetery. Her husband had tried to get her to go, to grieve, and his efforts were rewarded with nights on the couch. No one could make her go and eventually they stopped trying. She moved as far away as she could. She traveled as far away as she could.

Time was a mystery to her but she felt tired, more so than usual.

_Susan._

Not this time. She shook her head. Her straggling white hair fell about her face as she tried to stand.

_Susan._

Her knees gave out.

_Susan!_

She hit the floor with a thud. She didn't even cry out. Her voice had disappeared some time ago. Even so, she was beyond calling out for help.

The carpet smelled but she did not move. Her face melted into the sticky fiber. Her glasses lay inches away but she did not reach for them. She would not need them anymore. She knew she would not get up again.

_Susan._

It was persistent.

A hand, broad and strong, touched her back.

"Harry, I'm fine." She murmured.

"Will you look at me, Susan?" She recognized the voice. It was not her husband. His accent had been undeniably upper class British. This was thickly Spanish. She frowned.

"What are you doing in my house?" She croaked. There was no response. The hand still remained on her back. Then, it began to slowly travel up her spin, over her shoulder, down her arm until it had firmly grasped the hand laying listlessly beside her face. The skin was like tanned leather, a beautiful brown, and youthful. Against her own ropey, skeletal fingers, it was like soil and snow.

"Do you remember me?" The voice asked.

"No." She whispered. The hand tightened.

"You do, don't you?"

"I have no money. My jewelry is in my bedroom. Take it and go." She said tiredly.

"Please, Susan." She closed her eyes. She had not been lying. She had forgotten him. But now, now she remembered. The pleading in his voice was like a barb.

"I can't do this right now. I'm dying, you know." His face appeared beside hers. He looked exactly like he had when she left him, standing beside the tree, the look of utter devastation marring his features. He was so handsome. Harry could not hold a candle to him. The flame in her heart she had let go out long ago had burned only for him, truly. "You must be dead as well. By now." She stated.

He nodded slowly.

"I have lived a lifetime. A sad and happy lifetime."

"My life has been nothing but tragedy." She responded. They must have been a silly pair, she thought, a handsome prince and a decrepit old woman, laying on her dirty floor.

"They told me you were lost." He said sadly. She closed her eyes.

"So they went back then." She wanted to feel angry. She wanted to swear and hate them. There was nothing left in her now for it. He held onto nothing but a hollow shell.

"They think you can't return." He continued.

"I can't."

"I will take you." He said forcefully. His grip tightened yet again and something blew through her, like a warm breeze, like breath. She closed her eyes and cried. Empty tears. Hollow sobs. There was nothing

And then there was something. There was his arms around her. She was standing now. Her knees did not ache. Her lungs did not burn. Blood did not run.

She was young again. Her hair was not white, but chocolate. Her skin was not sallow but a creamy white. There was no wrinkles around her eyes, no sagging skin.

"Susan." She turned. They stood there, in their royal garb, waiting with expectant smiles. And there was the lion, watching her from a distance.

"You've all been here?" She asked venomously. She no longer felt empty. She felt hatred, anger. Deep resentment. Fire in her veins. "You've just been sitting here having fun and you left me there?"

"We died Susan. You lived." Peter said. He looked across the meadow at her as if it was just that simple. She turned back to the handsome prince, Caspian eyeing her sadly.

"I lived in hell!" She shouted at them. "My family was gone! What did I have left? A barren womb, an empty apartment, a superficial marriage? You left me there! You all left me there to rot! Didn't I give everything you? Didn't I take care of you all, feed you dinner, nurse you back to health? Why did it happen this way?" She glared most of all at the lion. That damned lion. That cursed lion.

"You listened to your fears again, Susan. You cannot hear me when your nightmares are all you can see." He stated. It was all so simple, and yet it wasn't. She stood in disbelief.

"But you're here now. We're sorry we left you Susan." Lucy smiled. Her tears were hot against her skin. Fire in her eyes.

"And that erases an entire lifetime of pain?" She snapped. "An entire lifetime of lost dreams and lost hope?" Caspian set his hand upon her shoulder. He smiled, a dazzling smile, that made her feel how she looked again. Memories. She was filled with memories.

"You live again, here. We all live here. This time, there's no leaving." The tears fell faster. She was sobbing. They were no longer empty. "Living hurts, Susan, it is pain, it is agony. I have held both my wife and son in my arms as they died. I have watched my kingdom sink into oblivion. It was worth it, if in the end, we can all be here together."

She clung to him like a girl, weeping. Her brothers and sister swallowed her in an all encompassing embrace.

Her husband's face flashed before her eyes. She remembered the day they had met, they day he had proposed, they day they found out she was pregnant, the day they discovered she wasn't, and the day the doctor called. You have cancer, Harry. There's nothing we can do. She could see herself at the front row of his funeral, her stony face beneath the black widow's veil. She could see his tombstone, and then the graves of her brothers and sister, and the grave she imagined would be worthy of a handsome Prince. She imagined her own grave as a kindly woman discovered a cold and bony corpse on a black carpet. It's better this way, you know. She had such a hard life.

"Forgive me." She whispered.

"You have always been forgiven. You just didn't know it." The lion spoke to her. A mighty paw encircled her, pulling her to a soft mane. "Do you forgive me, Susan?" He asked.

"I do. I understand now. It…It really was worth it." She whispered. A smile filled her face. She was no longer empty. She was no longer angry. She was something else entirely. For a moment she couldn't place the emotion. The lion released her to the four waiting for her. She watched him confused for a moment.

"Susan." She turned. The handsome Prince outstretched his hand. She took it without a second thought, like she had always wanted to do. He brought her closer. Thoughts of Harry were quickly flying from her head. Caspian kissed her gently.

She knew what she had become.

It was hope.

It was second chances.

It was happiness.


End file.
